The Last Serious Solution to This Problem is Lacking

The comments are there for people who want to explain their downvotes.

The only thing I can think of is an AJAX <div> reminder for users when they cast downvotes:

Please consider adding a comment if you think this post can be improved.

After the first downvote, we can't say we didn't remind them, and honestly that's as good as it gets. Forcing a comment will end in even worse results.

This solution was okay, but it doesn't address one of the main reasons why people don't leave comments when down-voting: potential immature, petty, and misguided retaliation from the original poster, which can (at worst) take the form of online and offline harassment (and worse).

To address the issue of misguided retaliation and forced comments, I propose anonymous, optional comments.

I think this feedback mechanism could be helpful, but only if it remains anonymous to the original poster. Then people can continue to freely downvote without having to worry about petty retaliatory harrasment (and other misguided things).

I also propose that moderators, and only moderators, have access to the record of who left which explanation, i.e. explanations are NOT anonymous to moderators. This is to help resolve instances of abuse of custom reasons (see more in Mockup).

Anonymous, Optional Comments Mockup

Here is a mockup. On every question, add an "explain" link, as shown:

For people downvoting, this would bring up a dialog with some pre-made reasons for why people would downvote a question:

Some of these pre-made reasons come from the help center. If you think reasons should be added or removed, please explain in a comment or an answer.

There is also an option to leave a custom reason.

For the original poster, clicking the "explain" link will bring up another dialog, or take them to another page, which has a table with all of the (anonymous) explanations for downvotes, as well as the number of people who voted based on each reason:

The original poster has the option to flag custom reasons for moderator attention (much like as with comments) if, for example, the custom reason is rude/offensive, or contains garbage like "laskjfaoigaefj".

Since users won't be anonymous to moderators, users who abuse the custom reason option can be banned from using the optional explanation feature altogether (much like a review ban), or perhaps even be suspended for egregious abuses.

Options for Experimentation

Perhaps as a test of this feature, the custom reason can be left out, and if the new feedback system demonstrates itself to be good, the custom reason feature can be implemented later.

Instead of only giving downvoters only one choice for a downvote reason (via radio buttons), make it an option to leave multiple reasons for a downvote (via checkboxes). When I downvote a question, it's often because of multiple issues, not just a single one.

I don't hate this, but isn't it largely covered already by the current close reasons (which already are supposed to be an explanation of what's wrong)? It seems to almost do what you are suggesting, with the exception of anonymous comments.
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Pekka 웃May 4 '14 at 19:49

@Mat oops, the repeated title was a (typo?) mistake, I wrote this in a markdown editor and then copy and pasted. Correcting...
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CupcakeMay 4 '14 at 19:55

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@Pekka웃 not all bad questions get closed. In fact, some are even upvoted to a net-positive score!
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CupcakeMay 4 '14 at 19:57

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@TheQZ not going to lie, I'm having a hard time coming up with a counter-argument against your very good point. But then we're just stuck. Users frequently ask for more explanations and feedback regarding downvotes, which other users frequently won't give to them because (1) anonymity protects downvoters, enabling them to vote more freely and accurately, and (2) giving explanations for every downvote takes additional time and energy. So I'm not sure what to do :/ Is it just not possible to have both?
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CupcakeMay 4 '14 at 20:11

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@TheQZ keep in mind, however, that the comment system I propose isn't 100% anonymous. Moderators still have access to who leaves custom downvote reasons, so it's not like there's no consequences for abusing the feature.
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CupcakeMay 4 '14 at 20:21

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@Mat alright, well then what about leaving out the custom reasons, and only making the pre-made reasons available, as I suggested under "Experimentation"?
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CupcakeMay 4 '14 at 20:26

I guess this would be useful to pinpoint exactly which part of "This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful" I really want to drive home? Meh.
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roippiMay 4 '14 at 20:48

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@gunr2171 the issue is more about feedback regarding downvotes on questions. In particular, the feature I propose provides immediate feedback. Voting to close doesn't provide feedback until the question is actually closed, which often doesn't actually happen, and if it actually does, it's often after a relatively long period of time.
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CupcakeMay 4 '14 at 23:51

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@gunr2171 you're asking for more effective question closing. That's quite a big issue all on its own. Anyways, not all questions will be closed, so they will have no feedback for downvotes that way.
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CupcakeMay 5 '14 at 0:01

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Recently, there was a discussion about what to do when you do provide a downvote comment and are then attacked by the asker. I've seen this a lot, and is why I almost never actually mention downvoting when also happening to downvote and comment. We really are damned if we do and damned if we don't. I'm not sure if the canned response form would be helpful here...
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CharlesMay 5 '14 at 2:01

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@Ben the explanations are optional! If you don't want to leave an explanation, the number of additional clicks is 0!
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CupcakeMay 6 '14 at 7:49

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This is the eternal dilemma distinguishing between who's a genuine ignorant (or somewhat lacks acumen) and who's spamming/being too lazy/exploiting and taking advantage of others.Teachers and professors are facing this all the time although they have an advantage: they get to know their students and they can be screwed once, hardly twice. On SO you don't know who's behind the question and thus you can't know if he's genuinely a newbie/not an internet expert user or if he is a lazy guy posting junk because he doesn't want to spend 10 minutes of his time reading the FAQ or doing his homework
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Marco A.May 6 '14 at 9:50

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I don't particularly mind this except I feel that it will increase the level of noise. What if OP decides to argue into the ether about the anonymous reasons for the downvote? Now we have to go flag those comments as "too chatty"
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staticxMay 6 '14 at 15:20

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Have you considered the solution that involves saying "no"? That's the best one I've come up with. If you're judging what's a good idea based on frequency of request, your next proposal will be a way of contacting individual users. :-(
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Cody GrayMay 10 '14 at 2:39

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You've made this too complicated. All you really need is a dialog that pops up with a single textbox when the downvote button is clicked, allowing the user to put in an optional explanation for the downvote. The system would then post a comment attributed to the Community User.
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Robert Harvey♦May 14 '14 at 17:20

5 Answers
5

I'm also one of those who are worried by downvoting newbies. I have currently 140K points and I'm pretty sure if my first questions were downvoted, I would have left SO to never return. It's one of the reasons why I stay away from Meta - the process here (and the level of harassment/mobbing I feel when I post here) are simply prohibitive for me to participate.

At the same time, I'm worried about anonymous abuse of such an option. But when I read

This is the eternal dilemma distinguishing between who's a genuine ignorant (or somewhat lacks acumen) and who's spamming/being too lazy/exploiting and taking advantage of others.

in the comments, I started wondering how much we (don't) know. SO knows a lot about its users. Not the newbies (but they can't up/downvote anyway). So what I would like to see is an analysis how many people are downvoted and how many of those never return. A full-text analysis might even allow to identify people who simply create a new account when the first one accumulated too much "bad karma".

On the downvoter side, I want to know if there are people who simply mass-downvote for fun. So maybe a system like the "you didn't vote for a question for some time" might help: If you downvote very often, the system should a) ask you to keep it in check or b) show some of the downvotes to other users (randomly selected) to see how much they digress from the average. If too many disagree, we can either reduce the number of downvotes such people get or get in contact with them.

Note: While I feel that many newbies don't spend much/enough time writing their question, that's my limited view. Bad questions have many reasons but here are two related proverbs:

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes. He who doesn't ask a question dies a fool.

There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.

I feel that being able to ask good questions is one of the most important tools for a software developer. I also notice that even seasoned warriors often lack this skill. A simple "you bad" doesn't improve the situation. Those people need to know specifically how to improve.

That's why I feel bad about the current system. Downvoting without giving a reason, especially for newcomers, feels wrong on too many levels.

If you have a good reason for the downvote, there should be no reason not to share it. Helping people improve is another skill which is very useful. And if you don't have a good reason (Didn't understand the question? Hate people who struggle with the English grammar?), you shouldn't be allowed to downvote.

...

P.S. I hesitate to post this because I worry how many downvotes it will get me :-( Is that a good thing?

You need not worry about downvotes on the new Meta, since they don't affect reputation anymore :) It has been mentioned by some moderator (I think) that people tend to upvote way more often than they downvote...meaning that people don't downvote enough. It's one of the reasons why downvotes became "free", instead of incurring rep loss for the downvoter (in the case of downvoting answers), and even then I've heard that people don't downvote as often as they upvote.
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CupcakeMay 7 '14 at 8:33

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I don't see how few downvotes could mean "they don't downvote enough". I feel that means that people prefer to improve a situation over mindless mobbing.
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Aaron DigullaMay 7 '14 at 8:46

Sorry but you seem to take this entirely too emotional. Downvotes are "mindless mobbing", downvoters need to be kept in check, number of downvotes should be reduced, because some people could feel bad? A downvote is the most direct form of feedback - "your post is bad". People need to understand it's not a personal attack! I'd personally feel way worse about reinforcing people who ask bad questions by answering without giving any indication that (and by all means why) the question is lacking. Also, there are of course stupid questions in the context of SO, e.g. everything that's far off topic.
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l4mpiMay 10 '14 at 11:59

If however someone abuses the downvote system, we have tools in place to handle it (e.g. serial vote reversing). Of course I don't condone downvoting because of things irrelevant to question quality, but I also don't see this being a problem. I can easily run out of my daily votes just by browsing new python and java questions and downvoting anyone who obviously didn't google the name of whatever exception is thrown by their code. I'd still run out of votes restricting myself to the most common exceptions. Do you suggest I stop downvoting these and thus passively reinforce this behaviour?
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l4mpiMay 10 '14 at 12:07

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@l4mpi: As I explained in my question, people don't learn how to ask good questions by some magical spell. They need to be told. Downvoting is just a cheap way to say "bad dog, down." It doesn't "actively reinforce good behavior." If these people would know better, the question wouldn't be bad in the first place. On top of that: How often have you been in a situation where someone expected something from you and you didn't know what? Did you feel that was a good or a bad situation?
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Aaron DigullaMay 12 '14 at 8:19

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Correct, people learn how to ask good questions by investing time and effort into learning how to ask good questions. People do NOT learn how to ask good questions when their bad questions are answered without even giving any indication that and why their question is lacking - after all, why should they seek to change or improve anything if asking bad questions works just as well? I doubt many askers are even interested in asking good questions as long as they get answers. And to be clear, I do try to educate OP by commenting or upvoting existing comments on all my down/closevotes.
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l4mpiMay 12 '14 at 8:39

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I've been coding for 30+ years now, some of it good, some of it bad. When I reflect on my overall career I have been told a number of times by various mentors to RTFM(Read The Flippin' Manual) but they almost always told me which manual. In peer reviews when people don't like or agree with something I've done they tell me why.
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TJAMay 21 '14 at 7:33

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@TJA Or LMGTFY but with an appropriate search term.
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ClickRickMay 24 '14 at 7:25

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@AaronDigulla: There are entire pages in the help center devoted to "how to ask a better question", along with other information in the tour pages and here, and further handholding by commenting and babying people isn't going to make things better. If you insist on commenting to try to "urge better questions", link instead to one of the existing articles that contains all of that information and vote to close the question until they've edited to improve it. Questions can be re-opened easily once they've been edited.
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Ken WhiteJul 16 '14 at 22:23

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@AaronDigulla Correct, you end up chasing away newcomers and worse, they leave without ever knowing what the needed to do.
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FMSAug 13 '14 at 19:16

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To this I would like to add the situation when a question with already low visibility, in an area where there are very few questions/answers or documentation, gets downvoted by people who don't understand the contents (which is likely when they downvote without an explanation)... and gets even lower visibility !
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ThaliaDec 22 '14 at 22:20

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I'm totally agree with this and here is my profile, I didn't made my courage to post a second question after get such mass down voting without any explanations.
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SkynetDec 31 '14 at 4:05

I'm pretty negative about this whole idea because of the opportunity for abuse. Any time we have to put our elected moderator team as the sole barrier between someone and widespread, unchecked abuse, we put a bit more strain on a system that relies heavily on distributed moderation.

Years ago, I ran into a guy on Stack Overflow who was climbing through the ranks of answerers at an impressive rate. Unfortunately, he was doing so based on very large numbers of answers that were, frankly, quite lazy: google search results, code without explanation, etc.

As we were both active in some of the same tags, I tended to run across his answers just about every day for a while - and most of the time, I'd end up downvoting them, for the simple reason that there'd be another answer on the question that did try to explain the solution presented. Sometimes, I'd leave a comment pointing out areas for improvement...

And I noticed something: when I commented, he'd argue about the downvote. When I didn't, he'd either put some more work into the answer or just delete it.

The arguing sucked. But what solidified my resolve to stop commenting on his posts wasn't the arguing - it was that I got better results when I didn't comment!

Over the years, I've observed this pattern again and again: folks ignoring or becoming angry at specific critiques, but putting significant effort in when they had to look to themselves to determine the areas for improvement.

Now, this is clearly not true in every case - some folks are just so lost that they need something to guide them if they're ever to have any hope of finding their way. And in many cases, specific technical critiques are invaluable, both to the author and to future readers because they simply wouldn't be known otherwise.

...But do I think it's worth remembering that comments are not a panacea for folks complaining about downvotes. Sometimes, the only solution is for the author to take a good hard look at their own work and then listen to the criticisms of the one person they actually respect.

Good insight, however, your example doesn't take into account the possibility of anonymous feedback. If there's no one to argue with, it's much less likely that someone will argue (although, not impossible :)
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threedJul 17 '14 at 20:22

Anonymity doesn't mean there's no one to argue with I'm afraid, @threed - it just means you can't follow them around arguing. Which is a small benefit to be sure, but... There's an old proverb about treating folks like children & getting back what you expect that probably applies here: if we engineer the software to cater to the behaviors of our worst users, we'll just end up with more like them.
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Shog9♦Jul 17 '14 at 21:38

Good point--we shouldn't avoid adding anonymous feedback to down votes simply because "our worst users" won't like it; we should probably cater to our better users, who will use the feedback to improve the site, and at the same time, protect those users who provide that feedback.
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threedJul 18 '14 at 22:34

@Shog9 Thank you for the example. Aha! consideration of human nature/behavior factors in ...
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FMSAug 13 '14 at 19:13

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I don't feel your argument is compelling. 1. I haven't seen such a pattern, yet and I comment my downvotes all the time. So maybe I haven't run into someone who fits your pattern or maybe your comments could have been different. 2. Even if this pattern applies to some people (how many?): What about the rest? What about the newcomers who desperately want (to) help but know so little, they don't even know where to start? Should we appear friendly or hostile towards them? And what behavior will make us appear the way we want?
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Aaron DigullaAug 14 '14 at 7:48

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You should (and I suspect do, perhaps without realizing it) decide whether to comment based on the context, @Aaron. Same goes for downvotes. Some situations may require one, some the other, some both - worth noting that your profile indicates you've left many, many times more comments than you have downvotes; perhaps you prefer to focus on situations where you can offer advice rather than rating? As for newcomers, I often leave comments on new user posts - and I've no wish to hide behind anonymity when welcoming someone to our site either.
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Shog9♦Aug 14 '14 at 14:06

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Nice anecdote, but given that this guy was "climbing through the ranks", he's nothing like the typical user that this suggestion addresses. He sounds much more sophisticated - he didn't need reasons to know why he did something bad - he already knew that, and knew he was being lazy. Downvotes called him on it, and without a user to rail against, he was forced to improve his answers. The biggest issue here is bad questions, not bad answers (they'll take care of themselves). So many of the new users just don't know the etiquette or expectations here. This could help them.
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GerratAug 22 '14 at 14:34

Questions are already more likely to get a comment than they are a downvote, @Gerrat. Heck, the vast majority of those that do get downvoted also get at least one comment. The proposal here suggests that folks would leave more comments if they didn't have to attach their names to them, which is probably true - and, I argue, not a good thing: if you've reason to believe your comment won't do any good, then the solution is to not waste your time writing it - chances are, you're probably right. My anecdote hints at one reason for this, but there are plenty of them.
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Shog9♦Aug 22 '14 at 21:45

I just asked my first question, one which I think I organized well and demonstrated sufficient effort to research/answer/understand myself. It was immediately down-voted without comment. I have no idea what I did wrong, and so I'll surely do it again. This helps no one.

You're right in observing that downvotes are not an educational tool—this is what comments are for. Upvotes are not an educational tool either, mind you. They don't tell you if someone upvoted your question because they're having the same problem, thought it was clear and useful, or because they thought it was nicely formatted. Voting—whether up or down—serves simply as the means by which we rate content. Questions are downvoted as if to say "this one isn't particularly interesting or useful, move along". Upvotes mean just the opposite. Comments are rightly disconnected from votes.
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Cody GrayAug 21 '14 at 12:46

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Here's the problem: "down-votes are not an educational tool" is another way of saying "down-votes are completely useless." Comments can be used to "rate content" or say "this one isn't particularly interesting or useful, move along" AND explain why. The problem is that a down-vote only helps readers. My question being down-voted helped readers not waste time on it (assuming for the sake of argument it actually deserved the down-vote). If the person had commented on what was lacking about it, that would've helped both readers and the author. Can't imagine how that isn't better.
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Joseph Lee SaxonAug 21 '14 at 14:30

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How do you figure it's a way of saying that? Comments are for dialog, votes are for rating. There's no reason to have a dialog in a rating system—in fact, it's actively harmful. If you explain why, people get all worked up about it, and you start having a debate in the comments section. It's much easier to just vote and get on with your life. Downvotes are only supposed to help readers. They're not intended to help the poster. Certainly you can do both downvoting and posting a comment. I often will. But they serve different purposes and should be disconnected.
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Cody GrayAug 21 '14 at 23:14

1

I think perspective is key here. As someone looking at downvotes as taking away rep, they seem like nasty, mean things, that should be explained. However, the SE perspective is that it's merely an indication that the question/answer should be less visible, whether that be just lower on the page or hidden outright. The fact that downvotes effect rep is only there to encourage users to write content that is worthy of being shown.
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Chris PrattMar 3 at 19:35

I agree with this proposal. In fact I was just about to submit a similar proposal and I searched for potential duplicates. But my idea was to make the reason required: when you downvote, it would open a box with set of default choices or you could enter your custom comment. Anyone can then see a table with downvote reasons and their score. Of course all information must remain anonymous.

Such proposal would improve SO because it gives very concrete feedback to OP, where downvoters feel the issue with the question. Currently downvotes may be understood as "community does not like me here". If OP can see what exactly is the problem he can learn much faster.

PS. I expect downvotes and I will not know if it is because of disagreement or because I am not native speaker and there are grammar mistakes.

I'd like to note that this hasn't been declined just once. It's been declined dozens of times...This is the epitome of the cliched repeatedly suggested terrible suggestion.
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ServyMay 8 '14 at 20:10

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@Leos Literak Your comments are spot-on. I'm currently going through a round of anonymous, reasonless down votes on another stack site. As a newbie there, there isn't much I can do besides learn a new set of -secret- rules to go by. The fact that it is so easy to chip away at another members reputation is bothersome. They've actually streamlined the process. At least in a court of law one is allowed to confront their accuser. Did Kafka help design Stack?
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blackappyMay 12 '14 at 3:35

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I genuinely try to contribute to communities like SO. Getting hit with an unexplained downvote just makes me sad.
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TJAMay 20 '14 at 3:25

@JanDvorak I guess that's one way to make a point :P
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CupcakeAug 16 '14 at 19:08

2

There's another answer, just beneath this one, that suggests exactly the same thing and has a score of -12, complete with the reasons why. Not sure what you hoped to achieve here?
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BenAug 16 '14 at 19:25